How difficult is it to lay an Internet "blind track" for the visually impaired?
With the help of QQ and other tools, the visually impaired groups continue to expand their ability to use the Internet, but information accessibility is still a niche concept
In the Internet world, Wang Yong is no longer a visually impaired massage technician with job number "14".
He listens to songs, chats, does shopping, engages in live broadcasts, and follows an online novel that has been updated to more than 300 chapters.
The "screen reading software" that comes with the phone is like his "blind cane."
Wang Yong put the phone close to his ear, and quickly swiped his thumb on the screen, and the information on the screen could be read aloud.
However, the screen reader software can only be used on some apps.
Many apps that are popular nowadays, some do not have accessibility features; some claim to have them, but they are not practical-the information is translated into "didi" noise, and visually impaired users hear a series of numbers after tapping the screen Garbled.
May 16th is the 31st National Day for the Disabled in my country.
According to data released by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the total number of disabled people in my country exceeds 85 million.
Among them, there are more than 17 million people with visual impairments like Wang Yong, and 23.5% are under 30 years old.
In addition, there are about 150 million elderly people over 65 years old with varying degrees of visual impairment.
To change the predicament that the visually impaired people are "difficult to move" in the Internet world, it is very necessary to build the Internet "blind track".
Yang Hua, secretary general of the Shenzhen Information Accessibility Research Association, introduced that in the past ten years, he has cooperated with them to develop barrier-free optimization applications and has expanded to more than 60 products.
But it is undeniable that compared with the fast-developing Internet industry, this "niche" business still requires more people's efforts.
"Blind roads" have been repaired on the Internet
The first wave of Internet accessibility in China can be traced back more than ten years ago.
QQ is one of the first products in China to develop barrier-free optimization. Huang Xitong, the technical director of Qzone at the time, participated in it.
In 2009, Huang Xitong accidentally "bumped" into the blind reading room of the Shenzhen Library.
At that time, Huang Xitong asked everybody if he needed mailbox and space?
The visually impaired told him that he had never used it because it could not be used.
Another reply stung him even more, "We searched all over China, but we couldn't find a barrier-free domestic mailbox."
Huang Xitong suddenly realized that China's Internet products have never fully considered the visually impaired.
Soon, in Tencent, Qzone, QQ mailbox and other products, the optimization of barrier-free functions was turned on.
For a while, Wang Yong quietly got up in the middle of the night to "steal food", and also met many netizens during this time.
So far, the most frequently used tool he uses is QQ: add friends through voiceprints, grab red envelopes in different group chats, send out "biting teeth", "sneer" or self-made emoticons; clicks are full of pictures QQ space-there, Tencent AI LAB's artificial intelligence algorithm keeps running, translating the picture into a simple and clear text description.
Wang Yong and his friends also unlocked "extremely useful new skills"-through QQ's "picture and text extraction" function, to take pictures of the contents of the manuals and leaflets to accurately extract the information, he no longer needs to trouble others.
There are friends who read the menus of frequently visited restaurants, unlocked all the dishes, and no longer need to "eat only those few dishes" because of shyness.
The 2019 Online Social Report for the Visually Impaired shows that 90% of the visually impaired actually need the Internet very much in their lives.
Their demand for communication software such as QQ and WeChat is as high as 99%, and they like to send expressions such as "shy", "satisfied", "crazy", and "wrong" when chatting.
According to Xia Zhiyong, product director of Tencent QQ, QQ has been paying attention to visually impaired users since 2009. So far, mobile QQ has achieved more than 3,000 barrier-free features, playing hundreds of millions of times a year.
"The details of the barrier-free screen reading function of each operating system and each mobile phone model are different. As an App developer, we have to adapt to different models, check and confirm, and the workload is very large." Xia Zhiyong said .
Nowadays, because of the increasingly developed virtual "blind road", some visually impaired people can also solve major issues such as online shopping, ordering food, taxis, booking train tickets, receiving and sending express delivery, and map navigation.
More than a year ago, Wang Yong also realized his first game experience in his life.
In the game "Shadow in the Sky" specially developed by Tencent Tianmei Studio for the blind, he put on headphones, judged the direction of the missile by the sound of the missile, and quickly swiped the screen to control his plane from being hit.
A producer at Tianmei Studio said that the game has received a lot of help from the Shenzhen Association for the Blind, step by step to change many "taken for granted" designs.
"In China, the visually impaired population is very large. On average, 1 out of every 100 people is accompanied by severe visual impairment. However, the degree of attention to the visually impaired population is generally not high." In the process, he realized that he wanted to truly Connecting these "strangers" requires the participation of multiple parties in society.
In 2013, the Information Accessibility Research Association, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and Microsoft (China) jointly launched the Information Accessibility Product Alliance to connect the power of enterprises, social organizations, and academic institutions.
More and more people realize that the construction of information accessibility is no longer just "what the government should do."
Written accessibility into the "product gene"
It has been 11 years since Huang Xitong's first barrier-free optimization product.
In retrospect, he felt that the original "screen-reading version of QQ Farm" was popular with the visually impaired, but it was not a truly barrier-free product, or even a "wrong approach."
The "Accessibility Special Edition" seems to attach importance to the visually impaired, but it exposes the flaws in the main app itself: the defective version is first launched, and the logic of "make up lessons" after the product becomes larger and mature.
In essence, it is still a "special need" that regards visually impaired users as the icing on the cake.
"Now when talking about accessibility, we are definitely not creating a new product specifically for the visually impaired; it is the original product and genes that are born with these functions." Huang Xitong explained that software developers should use App The function is adapted to the screen-reading software without barriers, and is integrated into the daily development and testing links.
In 2013, QQ decided to reconstruct the underlying architecture.
For a product with a daily capacity of several hundred million, the slightest change must be made with extreme caution.
The engineering team is under great risk and pressure to fully support the accessibility of information in the underlying architecture.
The next year, on the eve of the release of the new version, the development team discovered a barrier-free "fatal bug": the ad page that pops up when the new version of QQ is opened, and its close button is not set to a focus that can be identified by the screen reader software.
This means that visually impaired users may not be able to accurately close the ads and get stuck at the entrance.
Several teams urgently cooperated.
In the end, making the ad close button barrier-free became the first bug dealt with in the new version.
An accessibility defect almost affects the update of the major version of the product, and Huang Xitong has never heard of it before.
Yang Hua believes that this is an advancement in the concept of enterprise barrier-free.
She said frankly that the accessibility of early Internet products was more about "patching"; now, it is necessary to "initialize accessibility features into products" gradually.
Information accessibility is still a niche concept
"In this product, which function is the most important for the visually impaired?" Yang Hua is most afraid of asking such questions as he has been full-time information barrier-free for many years.
"We always say that every function is important. The visually impaired people want to use the same functions as normal users, and don't want to be treated specially." Yang Hua said frankly.
Although the construction of information accessibility has been moving forward over the years, Yang Hua has to admit that it is still a relatively niche concept, and many companies are indeed totally unaware.
She and her colleagues must spend a lot of time on the preliminary work-telling the company that it is necessary to do barrier-free things and should be done immediately.
At the same time, most of the domestic Internet products at the beginning of their birth did not consider accessibility features. Some relatively mature products try to make up for the early accessibility defects, which is equivalent to pushing back from the last step, and can only do "repairs". "The work, products that can truly achieve systemization are rare.
Yang Hua believes that information accessibility undoubtedly has a long way to go, and more people will gradually understand the need for information accessibility.
On March 1, 2021, the "Technical Requirements and Testing Methods for Accessibility of Information Technology Internet Content" was officially implemented, which is my country's first national standard for information accessibility.
There are 58 specific indicators for laying Internet "blind roads", and clear technical requirements can be used to uniformly standardize Internet products and services.
"What the Internet has to do is to help people connect, strengthen mutual understanding, and solve information asymmetry. The visually impaired people are an indispensable part of the world and the objects to be connected. That is what must be done." In Xia Zhiyong's view, there is a lot of work that needs to be done in order to systematically ensure the accessibility of products, but in the final analysis, it is gathered into one point: first unify the team's understanding and how to treat the essence of their work.
"All beings are equal. For everyone, there should be no inherent obstacles in the world. Whether this world is real or digital." Huang Xitong believes that this day will eventually come true.
(Reporter Xue Yuan)